Podcasts Not Telecasts (Kids Edition)

September 11, 2019 1:23 AM

Can you recommend good quality podcasts for kids?

My 11-year-old daughter currently listens to these podcasts:

Short & Curly
Fierce Girls
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls
Tai Asks Why

I checked some previous AskMeFi postings (there are a LOT of them about podcasts for adults, but only a few about podcasts for kids) and found a few recommendations:

Storynory
Brains On
Wow in the World
But Why

Any other recommendations? You don't need to target her exact age or gender, just looking for things that are interesting/engaging, and hopefully educational/mind-broadening in some way, but pure entertainment once in a while is OK too!

Thank you.

posted by Dansaman to Education (10 answers total)

We've recently gotten into Smash Boom Best, which features two guests debating which thing is better. Cats or dogs? Thor or Athena? It's a lot of fun, and it's great for modeling how to have a respectful and intelligent disagreement. Plus, it leads naturally to family discussions about whether the right side won.
posted by yankeefog at 1:56 AM on September 11, 2019

WNYC did one season of a podcast called Pickle. It’s one of our absolute favorites, so it’s a bummer that there aren’t more episodes. It’s a bit like Short & Curly...ethics for kids. Circle Round is a good storytelling podcast.
posted by katie at 3:15 AM on September 11, 2019

Our kids (8 and 11) have listened to (and enjoyed) most of the podcasts listed so far. Our daughter also really likes Six Minutes which is a fictional adventure story for kids told over (many) short episodes. We also listen to lots of podcasts not aimed at kids. Both kids really like 50 Things That Made The Modern Economy (short episodes each about a different invention, not heavy, no profanity) and Futility Closet (a history podcast that also includes a lateral thinking puzzle, no profanity, some episodes have some heavy/adult content, so you may wish the pre screen, though we don’t find it necessary). They also have enjoyed individual episodes of Invisibilia and 99% Invisible, but we do screen these ahead and avoid especially heavy/adult topics. Our family doesn’t mind profanity and has a pretty high tolerance for adult jokes and two other podcasts our kids like that are full of such things are No Such Thing As A Fish (a funny British panel show where each panel member shares a fact) and Ologies (an awesome and funny interview show with various ologists, we avoid certain episodes that deal with heavy/adult topics).
posted by ElizaMain at 3:45 AM on September 11, 2019

We’re super sucked into Six Minutes.

I like The Past and the Curious
and
This Podcast Has Fleas is brilliant, even though it stopped after a cruelly short run of episodes. Umbuzinho and I just listen to those over and over until we can quote Eugene Merman’s lines.
posted by umbú at 5:24 AM on September 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Here's a list of 25 from Common Sense Media (my goto place for all kids media recommendations). My kids liked Mars Patel.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:28 AM on September 11, 2019

My eight-year-old twins can’t get enough of the Cabinet of Curiosities podcast.
posted by killy willy at 7:02 AM on September 11, 2019

You’ve already caught our explicitly kid list, but here are some that are reasonably family-friendly that we all enjoy:

SciShow Tangents, a lightly competitive science quiz show, kinda similar to something like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me but more fun. They always end with a butt-themed fact which my kid especially enjoys.

Bombarded, a Dungeons and Dragons podcast where all of the players are 1) playing bards and 2) actual musicians in a band together, who write a song appropriate to what’s going on every episode (they roll dice to figure out their chords, it’s really fun.) We haven’t completely caught up but so far it’s pretty low on the fantasy-scary scale.
posted by tchemgrrl at 7:48 AM on September 11, 2019

I can't recommend This Podcast Has Fleas highly enough. I downloaded it for a long car ride and we have listened to all of the episodes (sadly, there are only five) over and over and over and over and over again. It's about a dog and a cat who live in the same house and they have competing podcasts. It's hilarious. I have an eight-year-old and it is beloved.
We also enjoy Smash Boom Best and Pickle. Both have been mentioned above.

I can't tell you how much I wish they would make more episodes.
posted by cleverevans at 2:22 PM on September 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Storypirates
Circle Round
Wow in the World

We also do a lot of audiobooks, which I download from Overdrive or Hoopla. You can also buy them on iBooks and play in the car.
posted by mrfuga0 at 6:47 AM on September 13, 2019

Response by poster: For anyone who reads this posting later, I wanted to mention that I found a big list of podcasts for kids at Kids Listen. If you click on FIND PODCASTS, you can get a breakdown by age. Very useful.
posted by Dansaman at 10:16 PM on September 13, 2019 [2 favorites]